Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1: Containing Sixteen Experimental Investigations from the Harvard Psychological Laboratory.
Science
Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1: Containing Sixteen Experimental Investigations from the Harvard Psychological Laboratory.
Psychology, Experimental
Rhythmical forms are not in themselves rhythms; they must initiate the
factor of movement in order that the impression of rhythm shall arise.
Rhythmical forms are constantly occurring in our perceptional
experience. Wherever a group of homogeneous elements, so related as to
exhibit intensive subordination, is presented under certain temporal
conditions, potential rhythm forms appear. It is a mere accident
whether they are or are not apprehended as actual rhythm forms. If the
sequence be repeated--though but once--during the continuance of a
single attention attitude, its rhythmical quality will ordinarily be
perceived, the rhythmic movement will be started. If the sequence be
not thus repeated, the presentation is unlikely to arouse the process
and initiate the experience of rhythm, but it is quite capable of so
doing. The form of the rhythm is thus wholly independent of the
movement, on which the actual impression of rhythm in every case
depends; and it may be presented apart from any experience of rhythm.
There is properly no repetition of identical sequences in rhythm.
Practically no rhythm to which the æsthetic subject gives expression,
or which he apprehends in a series of stimulations, is constituted of
the unvaried repetition of a single elementary form, the measures,
| >q. q |, or | >q. q q |, for example. Variation, subordination,
synthesis, are present in every rhythmical sequence. The regular
succession is interrupted by variant groups; points of initiation in
the form of redundant syllables, points of finality in the form of
syncopated measures, are introduced periodically, making the rhythm
form a complex one, the full set of relations involved being
represented only by the complete succession of elements contained
between any one such point of initiation and its return.
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